Today`s global business environment places increasing demands on IT to deliver non-stop availability with increased end-user service levels.
Accomplishing these objectives requires an increased reliance on improving system-wide performance and data management to increase availability, according to Andrea Lodolo, consulting manager for the field services group in Johannesburg at Computer Associates Africa.
"ARCserveIT and the Advanced Storage Option offers centralised storage management with performance and availability features for data and popular applications to ensure non stop business operations," he states.
ARCserveIT offers complete storage management, including:
* Essential data protection
* Hot database and messaging protection
* Comprehensive storage area network (SAN) solutions
* Non-stop application and server availability
* Data management
"It is imperative to exploit new technology by providing an open architecture that leverages storage innovations, new business processes, and other IT technologies," says Lodolo, "Storage Network solutions are a core component of Computer Associates` (CA) solution line up and leverage technology and products from other solution areas."
Storage Area Networks (SANs) are dedicated high-speed networks that connect multiple servers to multiple storage devices; they are used to improve overall performance, manageability and scalability in IT environments. SAN technology is in its fledgling stage and evolving rapidly. Lodolo says, "SAN adoption will be more of a gradual deployment into existing environments, primarily Windows NT homogeneous environments at first."
"The SAN Integrated Technology Initiative (SANITI) is CA`s vision for SAN integration in IT solutions as a whole," he says. SANITI outlines how CA`s architecture provides solutions with numerous benefits today, and how it will continue to deliver solutions with its partners, building on standards as they emerge, and pave the way to the Enterprise Managed SAN.
He adds, "CA has always taken a 'big picture` perspective on IT and believes that the SAN today is a sub-network in the enterprise which is dedicated to storage. However, the SAN is not an isolated topology and should not be treated as one. In fact, today SANs are always deployed and used in conjunction to LANs. Therefore, it is important to incorporate SANs into IT and the enterprise as a whole."
CA`s strategy for storage networks has been to deliver three phases of solutions:
Phase I - Multi-vendor SAN with full storage technology support CA`s philosophy is to enable all existing technologies under ARCserveIT to operate in a SAN configuration in an open, multi-vendor environment. In addition to FC-AL (Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop) support, the company introduced switch fabric support on the SAN with hierarchical storage management (HSM), data replication and data interleaving support.
Phase II - SAN Management
In response to customer requests to provide a solution that added intelligence to SAN objects and integrated SAN into mainstream IT, CA developed SANITI, a total SAN management solution that leverages existing technology. SANITI is based on open standards using SNMP and uses the latest interface technology to deliver server to storage device SAN management utilising the Unicenter TNG Framework. SANITI is in line with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)`s initiatives to deliver management functionality.
It accelerates the efforts of the Fibre Alliance and SNIA and moves the industry forward to:
* Deliver an open standards solution that is capable of managing heterogeneous devices -today
* Integrate management with both SAN and traditional storage devices
* Enable closer integration with SAN management and storage management
* Provide the most advanced interface management technology
* Deliver a no-cost, worldwide infrastructure for any depth of additional integration on Enterprise Managed SANs
Phase III - Advanced SAN Support
CA`s key focus in this phase is to provide heterogeneous support for UNIX, Windows NT and NetWare while offering a multi-platform SAN with single console management and porting technologies such as HSM and Replication that use the SAN as a transport. More importance will be placed on data and system availability as it applies to SANs; Phase III will also focus on delivering SAN availability through reactive and pro-active means by leveraging CA`s Neugents (predictive analysis technology).
CA`s Asset Management technology will also play a strong role in SANs, garnering information and managing storage resources for planning and maintenance. Phase III will blend additional solution area technology into SANs, such as enterprise management, media management, asset or resource management, security, NAS support and file system support.
Lodolo concludes, "There are a lot of variables today in terms of SAN file systems and attached storage device support that need to be answered. CA will continue to partner with leading hardware and technology providers to bring solutions to market."
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